Running can help bridge Westminster divide, say MPs ahead of London Marathon

Running can help bridge the political divide in Westminster, the chair of a parliamentary group on the sport has said ahead of the London Marathon on Sunday.

This year’s marathon will see 16 MPs, and one peer, take part, ranging across both the political spectrum and running experiences.

They include experienced runners such as Labour’s Josh Fenton-Glyn, a fell runner, and Conservative Harriet Cross, who won a 50 kilometre ultra-marathon in 2023 and is tipped by Tory colleague Andrew Bowie as among the fastest of the party’s MPs.

Others are taking part for the first time such as shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, who sparked rumours of a leadership challenge after he accidentally added 600 people to a WhatsApp group while trying to fundraise for the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association.

Meanwhile, Lib Dem Tom Gordon will be running his second marathon this month, having completed the Paris Marathon on April 13.

Another of those who will be lining up on Blackheath on Sunday is John Slinger, newly-elected Labour MP for Rugby and chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on running.

Speaking to the PA news agency, he said he had found running to be one of the things that brought people together in Westminster, despite their differences.

He said: “I’m a new MP, I was elected in July, and what I found was there’s a huge amount of cross-party working in all-party groups and select committees and just in and around the House.

“Don’t believe everything you see in the chamber. Yes, there’s a lot of yah-boo Punch and Judy, there’s also a lot of serious debate there and outside of the chamber people are, to a person, very friendly and civil with one another.

“So, it’s yet another way that we can enhance cross-party working because, at the end of the day, we are all colleagues at one level seeking to do the best for the country.”

While Mr Slinger’s group intends to encourage more MPs to take up running, many require no additional incentive, finding it helps them unwind from the stresses of Parliament.

Mr Bowie, the shadow Scotland secretary and acting shadow energy secretary who started running properly in the Royal Navy, said it “provided an opportunity to get away from the madhouse” and “think things through, contemplate and clear the head”.

Labour’s Cat Smith said she had taken up running during lockdown, “more for my wellbeing than my physical fitness”, completing Couch to 5k before taking on the London Marathon in 2021 and 2023.

She said: “I’ve done it twice before, and it’s a bit addictive, so I want a third one.”

Meanwhile, Mr Fenton-Glynn, the fell runner, saw things as a more binary choice, telling PA: “An MP told me you need to be careful, because there’s two kinds of MPs – running MPs and drinking MPs.

“You don’t want to be the latter.”

Six of the MPs taking part in this year’s race have run the London Marathon before while in office, although none are close to matching the record held jointly by Alun Cairns and Edward Timpson of 12 appearances in the race.

The most frequent participant this year is Labour’s Alex Norris, who is taking on his fourth marathon as an MP – and 10th in total – despite claiming to have done “precisely three training runs”.

Another returning runner is Lib Dem environment spokesman Tim Farron, who did the marathon in 2021 and 2022 before a knee injury while serving coffee at his local church a year later put him out of action.

He said: “I thought for a while that might be it, I might no longer be a runner.

“But, slowly but surely, I have mended, I think, and I guess you get to 54, nearly 55, you think, if I stop, bad things will happen.

“But I enjoy it, I enjoyed the buzz of doing it last time round. I also enjoyed the challenge of trying to be ready for it, the discipline of it.”

He would not say whether his party leader, Sir Ed Davey, should make running a marathon his next election stunt, but said he too had “paid a lot of attention to his physical wellbeing and is, like me, a man in his 50s who is, I think, fitter now than we were 10 years ago”.

Whether any of this year’s MP runners will break time records for the marathon remains to be seen.

The fastest ever time by an MP remains 2:32:57, set by Matthew Parris in 1985; and the fastest time by a female MP stands at 3:57:00, set by Liberal Democrat Jo Swinson in 2011.

But, in the same way MPs generally avoid commenting on expected election results, most refused to be drawn on how they thought they would do, focusing instead on completing the 26.2 mile course and raising money for charities.

Several have chosen to raise money for local charities: Mr Slinger has opted for Back and Forth Men’s Mental Health; Mr Fenton-Glynn for the Overgate Hospice; Mr Farron for mental health charity Growing Well; and Ms Smith for the Bay Hospitals Charity, all connected to their constituencies.

Others, however, have opted for national charities. Mr Bowie said he chose to raise money for the MS Society because a member of his team has the condition and it “doesn’t get as much attention as some of the other headline-grabbing charities”.

And although not a parliamentarian himself, David Prescott – son of the former deputy prime minister John Prescott – will be running for Alzheimer’s Research UK in memory of his father, who died last November.

The parliamentarians taking part in Sunday’s London Marathon are:

– Alex Norris (Labour, Nottingham North and Kimberley)

– Andrew Bowie (Conservative, West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)

– Blake Stephenson (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

– Cat Smith (Labour, Lancaster and Wyre)

– Chris Curtis (Labour, Milton Keynes North)

– Chris Evans (Labour, Caerphilly)

– David Simmonds (Conservative, Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)

– Harriet Cross (Conservative, Gordon and Buchan)

– John Slinger (Labour, Rugby)

– Josh Fenton-Glynn (Labour, Calder Valley)

– Lloyd Hatton (Labour, South Dorset)

– Michael Shanks (Labour, Rutherglen)

– Patrick Hurley (Labour, Southport)

– Robert Jenrick (Conservative, Newark)

– Tim Farron (Lib Dem, Westmorland and Lonsdale)

– Tom Gordon (Lib Dem, Harrogate and Knaresborough)

– Lord James Bethell (Conservative)